June 16

I was very tired when yesterday drew to a close, but tonight, I'm full-on pooped. Exhausted. Ready to fall into bed and sleep for hours (though I'm not sure how likely that is to happen since there's a apparently a rollicker of a band playing in Downtown Disney and the boom, boom, boom of the bass doesn't really work for my light sleeper self. But I digress).

It was, all in all, a good day that was spent entirely at Disneyland. There were a few disagreements because we're all human and a few bumps in the road with rides that closed down at inopportune times, but we made it work out just fine.

The highlight reel before I conk out?  Sure. We began the day by trying to go to the new Star Wars ride, but apparently every other person waiting at the gate when the clock struck 8 had the same plan, so the line was already two hours deep by the time we rolled up. So we headed over to the Millennium Falcon ride and did that one instead. (Brady and I were excellent pilots, for the record. We managed to net a profit, whoop whoop.)

We rode a slew of other rides, including Splash Mountain and Space Mountain, where we continued perfecting our photo game. And actually, one of the day's most interesting tales came from our time on Space Mountain. We'd just finished the final stretch of the ride when our car suddenly came to a stop and the lights went off. Then The Voice told us to stay in our seats (as if we'd get off, ha ha ha) and flight crews would come help us. So we sat there in the dark for a few minutes taking goofy pictures to test out the light meter of Adam's phone. (There's one that looks like Abby had cat eyes but I figured she'd be mad at me if I used that one so I went with the one in the top right instead.) And then a pair of cast members came and actually pushed our car to the ending point. I was super, super grateful that we were able to finish our ride before the unnamed problem arose.

From there, we headed over to Small World since the line was short, and then we wound up on the slowest boat ever. It moved through the attraction so slowly that by the time we saw daylight, there were at least four other boats right on our tail and Abby was laughing almost to tears over a comment Adam made about greased monkeys. (It was weird. But our conveyance was boat number 7 for you LA locals, in case you're looking for a leisurely float through the neon paradise.) Then Abby finally got the Mickey Mouse pretzel she'd been wanting (as did Isaac and Brady), Brady got the giant Mickey hat he's apparently always wanted (I had no clue), and we headed back to the hotel, where we watched the Warriors win the Championships over Boston (woohoo!) and had carryout pizza for dinner.

I am so grateful for the happy memories we've made so far. Tomorrow is our last theme park day of this trip, and my prayer is that it will be filled with more good times that we'll look back on with a smile.